


How to survive the collapse of the economy and a kidnapping by living in a broken bakery, as told by twins who did just that (somehow)

by crying_colors



Series: From the Nothing [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, because the oneshots in this series are used to explain character backstories, but i didn't have any other fleshed-out characters I could use for this, comment if you want to see jae's design bc i have some old drawings of him???, i'd reccomend reading at least part of the original fic first so this will make sense, mike and ike also know asl but that's not mentioned either because it's irrelevant as well, mike and ike switch names every so often to fuck with people, that's very very implied though it's never directly mentioned, the ocs mentioned aren't newsies ocs, there's like maybe four lines told in present pov, they have powers but its not mentioned because it's irrelevant, you can pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:46:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crying_colors/pseuds/crying_colors
Summary: Backstory fic that takes place in the From The Nothing universe. these characters haven't even been introduced yet as of the time I wrote this but I had an idea to write backstory fics for the newsies in that universe and no impulse control. This sounds like a shitpost but I swear it's not





	How to survive the collapse of the economy and a kidnapping by living in a broken bakery, as told by twins who did just that (somehow)

_ The day was better than most, the sun not as dim as usual. The windows of nearby shops seemed to have less grime, the streets were littered with less grit and rubble than usual, and things were the quietest they’d been in weeks. _

 

_ That was when there was a loud, echoing bang that rang out through the small bakery that was owned by Jae Taylor. The baker was a slim, young man, with messy hair. The sides were brown and cropped short, but the top was longer, blonde where it had once been dyed blue.  _

 

_ The man grabbed the first weapons he could find- a baseball bat, some matches, and fireworks that were probably illegal. There was a chance the person behind the door was friend, but he couldn’t be sure- and better safe than sorry.  _

 

_ Jae kicked down the door, terrifying whoever was behind it- a short, rugged male about the same age as Jae. He had two kids at either side of them, and was holding the poor things so hard his knuckles were white.  _

 

_ “Jae.” _

 

_ “What the hell do you want? We haven’t spoken in years, and last I saw of you you were trying to get a knife in at me.” _

 

_ “I found these two kids a couple years ago, took ‘em in and gave them some food. Don’t look at me like that, I’m an asshole, not a monster. Anyways, I can’t take care of them anymore.” _

 

_ “And what makes you think I can?” _

 

_ “Listen, the only people in this neighborhood that live somewhere actually habitable are Tris, Rin, Mason, and Theo, and they’d kill me if I showed up there. Plus, I don’t trust them with kids. Please, Jae, help me just this once.” _

 

_ “Fine. For the kids, not you. But then I want your hell-bound ass out of this city. Don’t come back here.” _

 

_ “Fine.” _

 

_ “Wait, hold up three seconds, I need their names. You can’t just drop two kids on me and then leave.” _

 

_ “Mike and Ike.” _

 

_ “Really? That’s the best you came up with?” _

 

_ “Shut the hell up Taylor.” _

 

_ “Nah. Which one’s which?” _

 

_ “No clue, friend. They switch each morning to fuck with me.” _

 

_ - _

  
  


Every damned day started the same. Wake up, decide what name you were going to use for the day, realize the government was hunting you, then grab your brother and run. It got boring after so long, really; there were only so many times you could evade death before it lost its spark.

 

Today, unfortunately, just  _ had _ to follow the cycle. That was to be expected, though-  _ they’d _ been doing the exact same thing for weeks now, maybe months, so a change shouldn’t be expected.  _ They _ being two twin brothers, Parker Cohen and Peter Cohen. They, naturally, absolutely never went by these names.

 

The twins hadn’t even known their actual names before they had gotten fucking  _ kidnapped. _ They’d been abandoned at a young age, left to fend for themselves on the streets of New York City. Because of the actual hellscape the city had been, they hadn’t had to go into foster care, but instead were sort of dragged into whatever home was hospitable enough to house two small children. 

 

Apparently, the first home wasn’t that creative when it came to names either, because they ended up just being called Mike and Ike and that was that. For years until they discovered their actual surnames, they took the name of their second caretaker, Taylor; They still used the name now and again, but neither brother had met anyone new in ages so it was unclear what their self-declared names even were.

 

The second place they’d lived in was probably the best one, and the one the brothers first thought of when they heard the word ‘home’. That was also, coincidentally, the one they had stayed in the longest. The first home, they’d lived in up until they were around five, before the person they were staying with just couldn’t care for children with the state everything was in. They’d then been dropped off at a baker’s half-destroyed shop, where they lived for years-until they were both around fourteen- and lived their until the owner disappeared, presumably dead. 

 

Mike and Ike lived on their own for a bit after that, before landing a place to stay with a conman and a thief. There, they’d learned things they hadn’t from the baker; how to steal, how to scrape by from leeching off of others. It wasn’t the most prideful way to live, but it was better than starving.

 

Then, one morning, the thief and the conman were gone. Instead of being woken up by the familiar shouts of whatever chores were assigned by the morning, they were  _ rudely _ awoken by some agent hovering over their beds.

 

Neither Mike or Ike remembered specific events of the months following this. They both had vague flashes and nightmares, sure, but they couldn’t remember anything detailed. That was for the better, probably. (One of the brothers had googled  _ why the hell they couldn’t remember anything specific _ , and supposedly it was a result of trauma. Fun. They had to get rid of the phone they searched it from shortly after that search, though, because they learned the hard way government officials were using technology to track people. Also delightful.) 

 

Either way- memories or not- the days still played out the same. Wake up, scrape together whatever supplies they had, and go on the run again. 

 

Parker Cohen was the first one up. Seeing as they’d never really gotten out of the habit of switching up their names, Peter Cohen was woken up by a foot jabbing him in the side and a familiar voice calling, “I’m Mike today, fight me.”   
  
“I will fight you, you were Mike yesterday.”   
  
“As much as I would love to kick your ass in a fight, we gotta go. We’ll figure out who’s who if someone actually talks to us. We slept in late, it’s like four-thirty in the morning.”

 

And so the routine continued.

**Author's Note:**

> they're going to be introduced into the main fic very soon I swear. i'm waiting until then to spill what their powers are too (unless you ask nicely then i'll probably say because again i have no impulse control)
> 
> -
> 
> "we slept in late, it's four thirty am" was a very hard line to write but get this they're children used to waking up at or before five and are also on the run from the goddamn government and need to get moving before the sun goes up to evade recapture.
> 
> -
> 
> mike and ike are the only people so far other than slink able to survive outside the group after the experiments. they don't know that the group even exists but they will soon enough.
> 
> -
> 
> the last, like, five lines take place around chapter ten or eleven of the main fic, k? k.


End file.
